Inspiration

Visit La Cité du Vin, France's Wine Theme Park

It's in Bordeaux, of course.
Image may contain Building Office Building Architecture Convention Center Planetarium Urban City Town and Metropolis
Courtesy La Cité Du Vin

Seven years in the making, La Cité du Vin (City of Wine) is an over-the-top, mega project with all the scope of a wine theme park for adults. Located on the banks of the Garonne River in the Bassins à Flot district of Bordeaux wine country—a roughly five-and-a-half hour drive or one-hour flight from Paris—this permanent World’s Fair of wine, which opened on June 1, 2016, is a 10-story, $91 million museum with a Disneyland approach to its 20 themed areas and exhibits. There is a 250-seat auditorium for screenings and classes, and in true theme park style, there is also a simulator boat ride, reimagining the maritime journey of a merchant’s galley across the globe.

This being Bordeaux, after all, serious wine drinking still comes first. There are expert-led tasting sessions, while the top two floors are given over to the panoramic Belvedere wine saloon, a restaurant, tapas bar, and boutique selling stock from 80 countries. There’s even a tribute to the hangover—an enormous plush chair where you sit listening to famous stories of inebriation. (Don't worry if your high school French is rusty: Entry includes a digital guide, which delivers the explanatory dialogue in real time in one of eight selected languages.)

And don't forget the "tasting experience," a multi-sensory space with moving sets, 3D images and olfactory whiffs. The goal, says director Philippe Massol, is to make La Cité du Vin the world’s largest cultural center of wine; a Guggenheim for grape lovers. It delivers on such a bold statement. Outside, Parisian architects XTU have conceptualized the building as a slosh of wine poured into a flute, a fluid 55m-high wash of gold, aluminum, and champagne-blonde glass.

La Grande Maison de Bernard Magrez is a wine lover's dream hotel.

Courtesy La Grande Maison de Bernard Magrez

Where to stay

Wine magnate Bernard Magrez has perhaps best captured the essence of what traditionally makes Bordeaux the world’s most sought-after blend. His hotel La Grande Maison de Bernard Magrez, just two miles from La Cité du Vin, opened in 2015, and it too makes a case for Bordeaux’s revival. A six-room wine-themed mansion and restaurant, it has 168 Grands Crus Classés in the cellar. Its two-star Michelin restaurant, which specializes in haute Bordelaise cuisine, is overseen by Pierre Gagnaire.

Where to drink

If you want to experience Bordeaux’s chateaux culture beyond La Cité du Vin, two can’t-miss wine bars in the historic center are Aux Quatre Coins de Vin, an oddball hipster joint with card-operated wine automats, and the École du Vin de Bordeaux, a wine school in name but more suited for pre-dinner dates. Both are set in the shadows of the UNESCO World Heritage-listed old town, an area so compact everything is a short walk or tram ride from the new museum.

When to go

The biannual Bordeaux Wine Festival (the next one is June 14-17, 2018) is as famous for its 80 wine pavilions as the lines of swaying drinkers. Taking place on a 1.2-mile stretch on the banks of the Garonne, it’s beyond rare to see so many chateaux working together. Outside of this time, they keep to themselves, pruning and preening harvest vines, hard at work in cellars. All eight appellations from the Bordeaux region are represented by the barrel-load, while there is plenty for teetotalers to enjoy: cask-rolling competitions, a street art exhibition from the Institut Culturel Bernard Magrez, and nightly performances of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony on the opposite bank at Hall Darwin. Each night, the festival closes with a 20-minute sound and light show, followed by fireworks that cast a glow on the 18th-century Pont de Pierre bridge. The place gets packed during the weekend, so if you can, come on the first two days.

How to get there

A new branch of France’s high-speed TGV train network opened this year, cutting journeys from Paris by 90 minutes (Eurostar is even mulling over a new "wine line" from London). But until then it’s best to fly direct to Bordeaux, a 65 minute flight from Paris on Air France. Considering the Bordelaise wait years for a prime vintage, they’re more than used to holding off for such good news.

Plus: Vote for your favorite hotels, cities, airlines, and more in the 2017 Readers’ Choice Awards survey.